


Absentees

by lightsaberlesbian



Series: Humans Fanwork Challenge 2017 [3]
Category: Humans (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 14:20:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14978981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightsaberlesbian/pseuds/lightsaberlesbian
Summary: Perhaps not feeling anything was the best way to feel.





	Absentees

**Author's Note:**

> Canon Week  
> Day 4: Absentees  
> Some characters were new in season 2, but what were they doing while the events of season 1 were taking place? Expand their backstory. Alternatively, take a character who only appeared in season 1, and do the same for them in season 2.

Happy birthday, honey!  
Had to take a last minute flight to Paris. Food in the fridge.  
Dad

Renie glared at the note, wishing she could set it on fire along with the £50 bill attached. She tore it off the fridge, the little black magnet with her father’s business logo in gold on it flying across the kitchen, and tossed it all into the bin. This wasn’t the first time he had missed her birthday, but usually he was decent enough to wake her up and make the excuses to her face.

At least with her father out of the house Stacey wouldn’t be there. Stacey with the bleached blonde hair, the short dresses and deep necklines. Stacey with the false lashes and the (obviously botox-lipped) sneer. Stacey, her father’s lover, whom he spoils like he did Renie when she was seven and he divorced her mother. Trips to the tropics, cruises, the latest designer fashion, thirty zillion karat gold jewelry, lobster and champagne dinners on a regular Tuesday. She’s half his age and only a few years older than Renie; they could have been sisters, it’s ridiculous, embarrassing, and totally transparent. She’d be gone within a year, having found someone even older and richer to be her sugar daddy, and he would have moved on to some other skinny twenty year old model to spend his money on. Renie knew the cycle by heart now, he’d been doing it for as long as she could remember.

“Hello, Irene.” From the doorpost, in its black dress and white apron, hair put up into a neat bun, their housekeeping synth fit right into their kitchen with all its shiny, empty, white surfaces. Picture perfect and sterile. Blank and emotionless.

“Alma.”

“According to my calendar it is your sixteenth birthday today. Please accept my best wishes.”

“Whatever.”

“A Helen Abbott has transferred twenty British pounds to your account. No message was left with this transaction. Do you wish me to notify Helen of the reception of this transfer?”

Tell her to go fuck herself, she wanted to say. But then of course the stupid dolly would actually take it as an order and she would end up hearing a lot less from her mother than £20 on her birthdays and for Christmas. Not that money was something Renie or her father were lacking, but it was nice to get occasional reminders of that her mother actually remembered her existence and hadn’t forgotten her completely. Although, who could blame her if she had? Had Renie´s husband gone behind her back screwing countless of women before, during and after their twelve years of marriage she’d probably want to erase every last memory of that wreck of a relationship too. And had she after the divorce had three new adorable children by another man, she too would have spent all her time making sure that her new family wouldn’t end up as disastrous as the one before, even if it meant that her firstborn would continue her life without her mother.

In the corner of her eye she could see Alma pick up the magnet from the floor. It was its birthday too, kind of. She had gotten Alma as a gift from her father when she turned fourteen, apparently to make up for his absence but instead it seemed that Alma enabled him to be gone much more frequently for much longer periods of time than before. She hated it for that, the stupid thing. Couldn’t her father just have gotten her an actual maid instead, or a nanny? At least then she would have had someone to talk to. You can’t talk to a tin can, it says what is expected, it doesn’t think. It doesn’t know anything about anything, it has no experience of anything, no knowledge of anything real. It doesn’t know boredom, anger or loneliness. It doesn’t feel. 

The synth put the magnet back onto the door of the refrigerator, then turned towards Renie, smiling indifferently as if it was the Mona Lisa herself. 

Perhaps not feeling anything was the best way to feel.

“How can I help you, Irene?”

“Could you get the money I threw in the bin, Alma?” She asked. “And get the car going, too. I want to get my hair cut.”


End file.
